Monday, December 21, 2009

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index may end the year as much as 6 percent higher if a typical December rally drives the gauge past a key resistance point, according to technical analysis by Bell Direct’s Julia Lee.

The index, which closed yesterday at 1,096.08, has climbed through December in 16 of the past 20 years, said Lee, an equities analyst in Sydney. Further gains this month in what’s sometimes known as a Santa Claus Rally could push the gauge past 1,121, the 50 percent retracement level that Fibonacci analysts identify as a point of significant resistance.

“The 1,121 level is the 50 percent retracement from the high of the bull market in 2007 to the low of the cycle in 2009,” said Lee. “It will be a challenge to break past that, but if it does, my guess is that the index will drift even higher to 1,160. If it doesn’t, we’ll probably just see a sideways movement.” (more)

Unemployment decreased in 36 U.S. states in November, with Kentucky and Connecticut posting the biggest declines from a month earlier.

Kentucky’s jobless rate dropped to 10.6 percent from 11.3 percent the previous month, the Labor Department said today in Washington. Unemployment in Connecticut dropped to 8.2 percent last month from 8.8 percent. More states reported reductions in payrolls than increases during November.

Unemployment close to a 26-year high is a blow to states, whose budgets have been strained by the recession that started two years ago, as tax revenue slows and more is paid out in jobless benefits. The U.S. unemployment rate is forecast to exceed 10 percent through June, limiting consumer spending as the economy recovers. (more)

The final Copenhagen draft agreement which was hammered out in the early hours of Friday morning includes provisions for a global tax on financial transactions that will be paid directly to the World Bank, as President Obama prepares to bypass Congress by approving a massive transfer of wealth from America into globalist hands.

As Lord Monckton, Alex Jones and others warned, the notion that the globalists would achieve nothing at Copenhagen has likely been a ruse all along. The elite look set to ram through the lion’s share of their agenda, which would include a massive global government tax at a cost of at least $3,000 a year for American families already laboring under a devastating recession, double digit unemployment and a reduction in living standards.

Hillary Clinton arrived yesterday to rally global leaders around a resolution and Barack Obama is set to be portrayed as the savior of the world by rescuing what was pitched all along as a conference doomed to fail. (more)

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said in prepared testimony the threat to U.S. fiscal stability is larger than ever, mostly because of rising medical costs.

Averting a situation where the U.S. struggles to finance unprecedented budget deficits "is more urgent than at any time in our history," he said in testimony Thursday before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

Mr. Greenspan argued that the problem of large projected shortfalls in Medicare and Medicaid can't be wiped away with more appropriations from Congress. "It is a physical resource crisis," he argued, which will suck more of the U.S. labor force and capital investment into the medical sector.

"A dollar of the nation's scarce savings employed to finance a new medical technology investment is a dollar not available to fund other critical, non-medical, cutting-edge technologies that enhance our material wellbeing," he said. (more)